Hrubes20

Fair point about Rotowire. But it isn’t the 65 grade on Clarke’s curve that necessarily piqued my interest so much, but rather that they feel his curve is tied for 2nd best in the minors. That’s fun stuff. The 65 rating/second best in the minors was by MLB Pipeline (which IMO is more exciting than minor league comments from Rotowire). Yeah, I knew that. I just didn't format my response very well. And I absolutely agree with you that it is much more exciting. So many guys that have a chance to break out this year. May can't come soon enough.

Fair point about Rotowire. But it isn’t the 65 grade on Clarke’s curve that necessarily piqued my interest so much, but rather that they feel his curve is tied for 2nd best in the minors. That’s fun stuff.

Nice That's the highest I've seen Clarke's curve graded. Good stuff. Jensen isn't even in their top 19, unless I spaced it. Seems to be the forgotten man in the system.

I would have been pretty jacked to see Law put a guy like Pinango in his top 10 a few years ago. Not so much anyomore. Law doesn't get near the looks at the DSL/Instructs players as he used to. Still, it's better than nothing. I share the relative optimism for Pinango.

Oof. That one's just as rich as the Hernandez/A-Rod or Machado stuff. Walker was a phenomenal hitter.

Care to give a rundown for those of us who haven't had a BA subscription for a year or two?

AZPhil is saying he's talked to some scouts outside of the Padres or Cubs organizations who are also really high on Preciado and have him ranked above Howard. I'm thinking it's more to do with them being waaaaaaay too low on Howard than being enamored with Preciado, but interesting to note nonetheless.

Rafael Morel probably won't be a SS for long. While his brother's limited offensively thanks to his approach, Rafael Morel is more physical, less twitchy, and not as good at defense Yeah, I wouldn't at all surprised to see Preciado moved straight to 3B and Morel to 2B, with Made getting the SS reps.

It will be interesting to see how they divvy up the SS reps in the former AZL. Preciado/Made/Morel are all there. Would also like to see Pinango make the jump to full season ball, but that's probably pushing it.

This a horsefeathering terrible return. The Hoyer era starts not with a bang, but a big wet fart noise.

You and me both.

Did they make any changes for next year on the amount of space that could be acquired, or is it still up to 60% of the original bonus pool? Certainly not impossible if they fall in love with the kid. You can’t trade for space in the 2021 class. And I learned something today. I had no idea they took away the ability to trade for IFA space when the signing date was pushed back.

We only have approximate dollar amounts on the 50 biggest bonuses already agreed upon so this information is incomplete but based on that, it appears the Cubs can’t hang with the 6 other teams. The other 6 all have way more than $1 million in bonus space while the Cubs have approximately $650k-$1 million left (and that’s based on us only knowing Hernandez and Ballesteros’ approximate bonuses and not knowing how much other guys they’re expected to sign like Daniel Ferreira will get). Did they make any changes for next year on the amount of space that could be acquired, or is it still up to 60% of the original bonus pool? Certainly not impossible if they fall in love with the kid.

No Brayan Altuve on either roster was a bit surprising. Maybe he's stuck in Venezuela? I don’t think those are instructs rosters. It doesn’t say instructs anywhere in those links, we know a few of the players are stateside and MiLB rosters out of season tend to have inaccuracies. Ah, fair point.

No Brayan Altuve on either roster was a bit surprising. Maybe he's stuck in Venezuela?

Not like a badass prospect but it's not often you see 6'5" switch hitting SSs at any level ------- This guy is Zobrist's newphew, a LHH MIF with a recently attained DBU commit, maybe a poachable non-first recruit Seems unlikely to me. His dad is the head coach of DBU, where he is signed to play.

Well horsefeathers. Pedro alone is more than I thought would have to be given up for Jose. I don't think Pedro Martinez is a future star or anything, but he actually does have some potential.

Do not make Jasson Dominguez angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry. https://www.instagram.com/p/CC7A_R8lgk3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Dude got wasted drunk and pulled a gun on a female food delivery driver when she arrived at his house. I'm not going to lose sleep over not adding that kind of person to the organization. There is more to the story than you are making it seem. I don't really know much about Maxwell other than what I read in an ESPN story a couple weeks ago, but 1) getting wasted drunk doesn't make someone a bad person and 2) he was in a really dark place where he thought he needed to be armed because of receiving death threats, and 3) they dropped the charges related to pointing the gun at the girl because they agreed with him (a raging black man!) that he didn't do it. That story makes him a tragic figure not a bad person. In my opinion. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29414410/the-exile-oakland-bruce-maxwell-birth-mlb-black-player-movement 1. That article is incorrect. He took a plea deal where he pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge in exchange for the State dropping the agg assault charge. This is extremely routine in a he-said, she-said situation like this one. The State didn't agree with him, but rather the prosecutor knew he/she couldnt' get a conviction. In fact, a quick search shows that the prosecutor actually argued at sentencing that he pointed a loaded gun at the victim and that he should have supervised probation, instead of unsupervised. The sentencing Judge also told him how lucky he was that he got off so light. 2. You are 100% correct that getting drunk doesn't make you a bad person. But why the hell are you going to get wasted with firearms right there? He's lucky as hell that he didn't shoot that woman. 3. I feel bad for him if he was indeed suffering from some mental health stuff, but that again gives pause as to why he was self-medicating with alcohol and handling firearms. At best, he was being really stupid. At worst, he was being negligent and put others at risk.

Dude got wasted drunk and pulled a gun on a female food delivery driver when she arrived at his house. I'm not going to lose sleep over not adding that kind of person to the organization.

I hated that damn draft at the time and it looks even worse in retrospect.

I think the complete arbitrariness (if this isn't a word, it is now) is what made it so appealing to the guy who proposed it. I can't remember who threw this out there, but it was one of the national guys. I'm obviously against the international draft as a whole, but when it inevitably happens, I would rather something like this than another draft order based solely on record. Can you imagine the tanking if there was a Harper type prospect going to be available in the draft, as well as a Jasson Dominguez prospect in a IFA draft? Arbitrariness is definitely a word lol. That's why MLB needs to do a draft lottery system with pretty even odds for the bottom 6-8 teams. I mean teams are going to tank, but just don't reward the team that tanks the hardest (like Houston a few years back). Maybe add a clause that if a team picks in the top 3 in the draft then they automatically disqualify for the lottery the next year. I'm not a fan of the international draft, but what teams are doing these days is really messed up. It makes me pretty upset when a team makes a promise to a kid and his family for big money, and then the team reneges on that handshake agreement when the 12-year old doesn't continue to improve and grow like they expected... I don't think the Cubs have ever done that (under Theo), but plenty of other teams have. A lottery would also be a really good idea, IMO.

Great to see! I just assumed he had TJS.

I think the complete arbitrariness (if this isn't a word, it is now) is what made it so appealing to the guy who proposed it. I can't remember who threw this out there, but it was one of the national guys. I'm obviously against the international draft as a whole, but when it inevitably happens, I would rather something like this than another draft order based solely on record. Can you imagine the tanking if there was a Harper type prospect going to be available in the draft, as well as a Jasson Dominguez prospect in a IFA draft?

Thanks for sharing that article. Yeah, things can get very messy over there and coming to agreements with 12 or 13 year olds feels pretty gross, but every team does it. We probably came to an agreement with Cristian Hernandez around the same age... The whole situation sucks and will probably lead to an international draft that will take place in January every year. Eric thinks it will happen in 2022 (after the new CBA is finished and agreed to) and Kiley thinks it will happen in 2023. The problem with having a draft for international prospects is MLB probably limiting the number of rounds to something really small (5-6) and then UDFAs will be limited in how much they can sign for. Some really small bonus number that isn't fair... The other problem is order for the draft will be based on how teams finished during the regular season. So a rebuilding team that sucks will get a high pick in the International draft in January and the MLB draft in June, which will supercharge tanking and make the problem even worse. Cubs can still sign very talented IFAs right now, but that goes away once an international draft system is in place. I know the Players Union was pretty opposed to an international draft last time, but this next CBA round will be an excruciating affair. I could see the players caving on this issue for something they really want (stop to service-time manipulation and delayed FA). We'll see what happens. It really sucks and there are no good answers for how to deal with this, unfortunately. I think I saw a proposal where the draft spot in a hypothetical international draft wasn't based entirely on record. I think it was centered around the divisions first. It was something like this: 2021 NL West drafts 1st (Order is based on previous year's record, so Padres would have the 1st pick and the Dodgers the 5th pick) AL West drafts 2nd NL Central drafts 3rd AL Central drafts 4th NL East drafts 5th AL East drafts 6th 2022 AL West drafts 1st NL Central drafts 2nd AL Central drafts 3rd NL East drafts 4th AL East drafts 5th NL West drafts 6th 2023 NL Central drafts 1st AL Central drafts 2nd NL East drafts 3rd AL East drafts 4th NL West drafts 5th AL West drafts 6th and so on and so on. It obviously wouldn't eliminate tanking, but it wouldn't provide much additional incentive to do so, since the best you could do is 3-4 spots higher in the international draft.